Friday, July 23, 2010

Congress Created Them All

You’re right to worry that Uncle Sam responded to the public’s anxiety about terrorism by creating an overgrown intelligence bureaucracy with bloated budgets that strain our wallets and arbitrary powers that mock the Constitution as they threaten our freedoms . . . Will bureaucrats in, say, the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection spend taxpayer funds more wisely than do bureaucrats in the NSA? Is the power to command people to purchase health insurance, or the power to prohibit consenting adults from buying and selling certain kinds of financial instruments, really so mild and beneficial that we should calmly welcome the exercise of these powers while we simultaneously quake with fear at the exercise of “intelligence” powers?